From the moment of meeting fifty-nine-year-old retired FBI agent Brigid Quinn, I found myself holding my breath and sitting on the edge of my seat, fearing for her reputation as well as for her life as she covers up an accidental killing of HER POTENTIAL MOLESTER.

The MOMENT, published 2011, is a story of love and betrayal. One moment all is well; the next everything hangs in the balance. Protagonist Thomas Nesbitt is a writer of travel books.

The second in his trilogy—the first, Advent, was reviewed in Agenda’s last issue—Anarchy opens in British Columbia Canada, where strange things are happening.

As suggested by its dust cover, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna, historical fiction, is about a “hole.” However, throughout the novel, the meaning of that “hole” changes. The novel is alternately set in Mexico and the United States. In 1929 at the age of twelve, Harrison William Shepherd’s parents separated, and he was taken from Virginia to Mexico by his Mexican mother.

A new author, James Treadwell has penned a delightful fantasy of magic and sorcery. Advent, published earlier this year, is literally as well as symbolically the first novel of a trilogy. Having so enjoyed J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and still wishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows had not been the last, this grandmother found Treadwell’s novel a very enjoyable and suspense-filled substitute; and I am looking forward to the second book.

Quite frightening, but the solution was even more frightening. Bertrand Zobris, rich and world-famous doctor, invents a solution, based on the theory that the plagues of yesteryears were a way of balancing the population, for example, the Black Death in Europe in the 14th Century, which killed an estimated 75 to 200 million people.

Paper Farms’ publishing debut features three novellas published under the Black Hills Press imprint. Defined as “a distinctive, mid-length fiction often overlooked as a literary genre,” the novellas have often fallen out of place, being too long to be a short story, and too short to be considered a full-blown novel.

After the excitement of the holidays comes always a letdown in spirits; and it seems that just about everyone could use a lift. Well, count on Nora Roberts to provide just that as going in, you know you’re in for a “happy-ever-after” treat.

At sixteen in rural England at the start of the 1960s, Laurel Nicolson hides in their tree house to avoid the family outing in celebration of her baby brother’s second birthday.  From there she witnesses a horrible act that involves her mother.  Innocently, she attests to the fact that her mother’s response was to protect her two-year-old child and herself. Years later in 2011, Laurel, an acclaimed actress now in her sixties, visits her ninety-year-old mother in the hospital in Suffolk, England, where Laurel and […]

Five young men meet in college, become fast friends, and remain so long after graduation, having now become established in their careers. They make an annual trip to Las Vegas, and in this tenth year for the first time one of the friends is missing.